Agricultural policies a complete failure: Dems

The Democrat leader will detail the government’s key failures on its first anniversary on Friday, a day before the administration is set to hold an event to announce its achievements.
Chinnaworn Boonyakiart, the Democrat shadow agriculture minister, said the government of Yingluck Shinawatra caused the prices of rubber sheets, palm oil and fruit, and coconuts to fall during its first year in office.
The failure of the Yingluck government caused a drop in the price of rubber sheets from Bt140 per kilogram during the Abhisit government to Bt76 now, Chinnaworn said.
Farmers had been hit by a loss of Bt50 per kg of rubber sheeting, he said, while the country had lost about Bt150 a kg in revenue from rubber sheet exports.
Chinnaworn said the Yingluck government wasted the first six months by not taking any action to stop a fall in rubber sheet prices.
The government decided on January 24 to spend Bt15 billion to intervene in the market, at a rate of Bt120 per kg, but failed to shore up prices. He said the intervention was allegedly full of corruption, so farmers did not get full benefits.
The MP said the Yingluck government also made two blunders that caused world prices for rubber sheets to drop. In the first, Agriculture Minister Pornsak Charoenprasert signed an MOU with the Chinese government to sell rubber sheets to Beijing at the price of Bt105. In the second blunder, Deputy Agriculture Minister Natthawut Saikua signed a contract to sell rubber to China at a government-to-government price.
Chinnaworn said the price of oil palm dropped to Bt4 per kg from the previous government’s Bt5.76 because Yingluck’s administration allowed imports of palm fruit, although local farmers produce up to 12 million tonnes of the fruit a year.
The price of coconut had also dropped from Bt12.5 during the Abhisit government to Bt3 – a fall of 76 per cent – although 400,000 rai of coconut plantations had been destroyed by an epidemic caused by a type of worm.
Democrat MP Atthawit Suwanphakde said party leader Abhisit Vejjajiva would point out key failures of the government at the Democrat head office at 1pm on Friday.
Earlier, chief coalition whip Udomdej Ratanasathien said the government would announce its achievements to the media on Saturday. But Yingluck said the government would announce its various projects at an event to be held at Rajamangala Stadium.
Atthawit said Abhisit would highlight key failures of the government, according to analysis by the Democrat shadow cabinet.
One was the borrowing of Bt350 billion for major flood-prevention projects – because, so far, only Bt700 million has been drawn to implement these projects.